Virginia closes the bay's winter blue crab dredge fishery for another year

The Chesapeake Bay winter crab dredge fishery will be closed for yet another year after Virginia Marine Resources Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to give the bay's depleted stock of iconic blue crabs time to rebuild.

The 7-0 vote in Newport News rejected a proposal that would have reopened the dredge fishery as a pilot program with tight limits and restrictions, and closed it outright for another winter.

The latest stock survey showed the blue crab population has plummeted to less than half what it was the previous year.

"I can see us in the future having a crab dredge fishery," said associate commissioner Ed Tankard. "But abundance is too low now."

"The timing is wrong," said associate commissioner Ken Neill. "I just don't think this is a good year for this."

The move was praised by a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, who called it a tough decision by commissioners.

"CBF remains hopeful that with conservation-minded management in place, the blue crab population will rise to consistent and sustainable levels where Virginia can consider options for increasing harvest and maximizing the economics of the fishery," said Chris Moore of the CBF's Norfolk office.

State leaders, watermen and environmentalists alike are concerned that the overall population of blue crabs in the bay plunged from 765 million last year to about 300 million this year.

This is the leanest the stock has been since 2008, when a population of 298 million prompted federal officials to declare an emergency and Virginia to partner with Maryland on a stock management plan.

That year, Virginia closed its winter crab dredge fishery and has voted to keep it closed every year since. Maryland has banned it for many years.

A dredge is a large metal "rake" used to scrape up crabs from the water bottom. It's a controversial harvest method, compared to traditional crab pots, because it also damages and kills a percentage of crabs in the process.

The latest winter dredge survey found the most imperiled bay crabs are juveniles, which dropped in population by 80 percent over last year, from 581 million to 111 million.

Only spawning females have shown improvement in numbers, increasing from 95 million two years ago to 147 million last year. The target population for sustainability for spawning females, however, is 215 million.

Females spend the winter in the high-salinity lower bay while males prefer the lower-salinity upper bay and its main tributaries. Nearly all the crabs harvested in the bay during winter dredging are females.

Experts attribute the overall population drop to weather factors, deteriorated water quality that destroyed swaths of underwater grasses and oyster reefs that provide essential crab habitat and protection from predators, and an uptick in the number of predator species, such as rockfish and puppy drum.

Commissioners said they will consider reopening the winter crab dredge fishery once the stock rebounds.